Heisler: Lakers won’t win title next season – but then their fun will start

Share this:

No matter how little Jerry West believes the Lakers needed to do to convince LeBron James to join their roster, they’re likely still another summer away from assembling a true NBA title contender. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

If it’s clear that nothing is as it was – a positive development after eight lean years following decades of fat ones in Lakerdom – no one knows what to expect from LeBron James’ arrival with the Lakers.

Happily, I can clear up a few things:

• No, he hasn’t changed his name.

I don’t know where “LABron” came from, although dozens of internet guys rewriting the few real reporters asking questions of the real principals will soon claim a scoop on it.

But, hey, it’s cute!

• No, Laker fans don’t all get to hang out with LABron.

A James tweet – “Culver City?” with the emojis for thinking face, eyes and slice of pizza – was taken as a hint that he would show up at his Blaze Pizza location there.

With talk radio hyping it, fans lined up for blocks.

See if you can guess how it turned out.

• Lakers fans don’t get to hear from LeBron, either, except on his social media feeds.

He’s definitely a Laker, having signed his new four-year deal, but he was in the air, bound for Italy with the family before the news of the agreement broke on July 1.

He’s not expected to make his first public comments until the July 30 opening of the “I Promise” public school he built in Akron, his hometown, for students at risk of falling behind.

Lakers officials say he might not talk to the local press until training camp. This would be a diva move, but James’ relationship with the press, especially those who deal with him most, has been excellent.

He’s now beyond the normal give-and-take with his legacy secure despite all the comparisons to Michael Jordan. If MJ is still the consensus best ever (for me too), James has a niche all his own among modern players as an all-time great with vast charitable endeavors and fearless political engagement.

He can be LeBron whenever he feels like it, or knock off for a while as he’s doing now.

• The Lakers didn’t really have to recruit James.

Subsequent reports from insiders confirm signals that whatever heavy lifting Magic Johnson had to do had already been done.

LeBron had done his homework and was theirs to lose all along.

“All due respect to the Lakers, who handled everything well but as these things go, LeBron was not a tough free-agent signing,” Jerry West told Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum.

“LeBron wanted to come to L.A. and he wanted to come to the Lakers. Period.

“He has a family he’s thinking about. He has a home here. He has a son whom he wants to keep in one school in Los Angeles.

“He will be a celebrity out here, sure, but it’s a place where once in a while he can get lost, be himself. You can’t do that everywhere.”

• The Lakers’ next season is about transition, not contention.

I’m talking about “contention” in the Lakers tradition, which means contending on equal terms, not clinging to a hope – shared by all other teams – of shocking the world.

“Transition” in the Lakers’ case means something more realistic, and farther-reaching: the process already in motion with a maximum salary slot saved for a premier free agent in the 2019 class headed by Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Klay Thompson and Jimmy Butler.

So why are the Lakers talking about their new defensive approach to knocking off the Warriors?

• Hey, it’s summer.

Nobody sets out to throw away a season, not even teams that will tank or the few, like the Lakers, with better times awaiting farther out.

Lakers GM Rob Pelinka spelled it out last week, confirming reports that the surprising moves for Lance Stephenson and Rajon Rondo were Johnson’s choices, not LeBron’s.

“Earvin and I had a conversation and LeBron echoed this sentiment,” Pelinka said. “I think to try to play the Warriors at their own game is a trap.

“No one is going to beat them at their own game so that’s why we wanted to add these elements of defense and toughness and depth and try to look at areas where we will have an advantage.”

• It won’t work.

If the Lakers just came up with a counter-revolutionary adjustment that contains the shining emblem of an offensive revolution that was years of changing schemes and rules in the making, it will make all else in their storied history look like a bunt.

The defense that Stephenson plays is the physical, Old School approach of taking something away, be it the offensive players’ strong hand, or sending him to help, or double-teaming him near the basket.

The closer to the basket and the more people around you, the more you can get away with.

The farther from the hoop, the more exposed and visible you are, the harder it gets.

Hardest of all, or impossible, is taking away the outside shot of someone as transcendent as Steph Curry with his great handle and range out to 40 feet, since he can merely retreat further, or whoosh past you.

And that’s just Steph who’s out there with another transcendent player, Durant, and a perfect complementary shooter, Klay Thompson.

The above paragraph would have been the same word for word if 6-foot-8 Jordan Bell started at center but now it will be DeMarcus Cousins.

So, good luck Lakers!

That’s only for next season. Beyond that, they’ve already gone a long way toward creating their own luck.